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8
Introduction

S ITUATIONS THAT DEMAND a choice between difficult alternatives are

often announced in painful and sometimes foreboding metaphors. We
speak of being captured on the horns of a dilemma, trapped between a
rock and a hard place, and being forced to navigate the straits bookended
by the mythical sea monsters Scylla and Charybdis. With comparable
urgency, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg identified “the
cruel trilemma” confronting individuals who, if shorn of the 5th
Amendment right against compelled self-incrimination, could be required
to choose between three punishing outcomes: “self-accusation, perjury or
contempt.”1 Appended to either prefix, “di-” or “tri-”, the common root
“lemma” would appear to suggest a conundrum of some consequence.
Alas, it does not translate so neatly. The term most commonly refers to a
subsidiary proposition or premise that is used to help establish a grander
one, functioning like a stepping stone in a progressive, structured
argument. A botanical usage, however, offers an intriguing alternative. A
lemma in this context is a “bract” (a specialized leaf) that helps surround
or envelop the delicate flower of a grass plant.
The term “lawlemma” will not be found in a dictionary. It requires a
brief introduction. On one hand, it is intended to have kinship with
lemmas of the “di-” and “tri-” variety, connoting a need to make a
difficult choice, but one that in some way implicates rules of law. On the
other hand, it implies that its unsheathing heralds discovery of something
quite beautiful and intricate, much like a flower to behold. It is best
represented in narrative form, where the focus is on people immersed in
the complicated and frequently uninvited circumstances they encounter in
life's uncertain plans. A lawlemma defies simple resolution. It might
easily have multiple (though not equally satisfying) solutions, which are
best examined by identifying and working through the principles offered
in justification of alternative or competing outcomes. Its lifeblood, and
elegance, can be found in the fascinating mix of values that undergird law
and embody justice.

9
 On the surface, the law is an authoritative set of rules put in place to
govern social living. Its sources are diverse and its reach is expansive. It
comes in different guises, labeled “criminal,” “civil,” or another such
variant. Although in actuality it is quite impossible, we are presumed to
know what these rules of ordered living are, at our peril. Ignorance of the
law is not an excuse. Yet even if we somehow mastered the rules, that
knowledge, standing alone, would still leave us ignorant about the law in
essential ways. Written rules have a past. They have a purpose—a raison
d'etre. With few exceptions, they are grounded in pre-existing
fundamental principles which, in part, reveal winners and losers in
struggles for power. Written rules acquire meaning in application, where
they can bear but faint resemblance to their formal terms. The law springs
from and operates within the complex dynamics of life itself, and hence is
infinitely richer than its manifestation in the form of rules.
There is no better way to expose and explore these dimensions of the
law than by entering the world in which the law functions and sampling
some of the exquisitely challenging human and social issues—an array of
the lawlemmas—which arise in life and beg principled resolution. The
following pages thus offer a series of essays—purely fictional, although
rooted in fact—involving characters whose perspectives and predicaments
help shed light on the competing values and down-to-earth practical
considerations that vie for dominance as their narratives unfold. Two
characters are especially frequent visitors.
Professor Ethan Andrew Jurus teaches at a large state university. His
classes are law-related, including his undergraduate Issues in Justice
seminar. He is a licensed attorney who occasionally handles cases in
addition to his classroom responsibilities. His knowledge of legal doctrine
is vast, owing to the considerable time he has spent ensconced in libraries
while absorbed in tomes of law. He would be the first to admit that his
insights about life are less fully developed, although he remains eager to
take advantage of experiences that will enhance them, including soliciting
and seriously considering the perspectives offered by his students.
Prudence Emma Durham—known to her friends as “Pru”—is a college
student enrolled in Professor Jurus's Issues in Justice class. The language
and methods of law are new to her, as they are to most students at her
level. She nevertheless is a quick study and her healthy measure of
common sense more than compensates for her modest store of legal
knowledge. Inquisitive by nature, and not at all timid about pressing for
answers, she is inclined to roam in thought and action where others do not
venture. While conceding the importance of book learning, she is eager to

10
take advantage of the extracurricular lessons that help define a college
education.
Regularly lurking near the intersection of Professor Jurus and Pru's
perspectives about law, education, life, and other things that matter is the
elusive quest for justice.
The questions they encounter find home in the lively arena of human
activity. Perhaps because they cannot be put to rest elsewhere, these
questions frequently come in search of answers within the much narrower
and tidier confines of courts of law. The problems they embrace are not
abstractions. They originate, sometimes inauspiciously and sometimes
quite dramatically, in the day-to-day experiences of real people. How they
are answered can deeply and directly affect those individuals' wellbeing.
But that is not all.
When questions find their way into a court of law, their answers—in the
form of a jury's verdict, a trial judge's ruling, or an appellate court's
decision—are announced as acts of judgment. Superimposed upon the
individuals who are conscripted as actors in these very public morality
plays are larger and sometimes transcendent issues. Their resolution gives
voice to fundamental value choices, choices that reaffirm, clarify, or for
the first time articulate shared standards of morality and elemental notions
of right and wrong. The resultant decisions and decisional principles then
assume a life of their own, largely decoupled from the individuals and
cases that spawned them. It thus becomes all the more important to be
able to explain—to justify—why and how the questions were answered as
they were.
Not surprisingly, the answers given to questions of law are often
controversial and disputed. The same can be said about the accompanying
foundational premises, principles, and supporting rationale. Law is not a
science. It is not value-free. It is not a brooding presence that hovers
somewhere above and independent of society, awaiting discovery and
application. It is a conspicuously human institution. Like the individuals
who crafted and continue to mold it, and like the social relationships it is
designed to manage, the law can be complex, highly nuanced, fraught
with ambiguities, and extraordinarily frustrating to try to harness. Like
life, it can be quite messy.
The snippets of life portrayed in the ensuing pages come cloaked in
familiar legal garb: for the most part, they evoke questions of criminal law
and constitutional law. Within those cavernous headings they invite
exploration of a host of difficult value choices and case-specific
subsidiary issues. A more detailed precis is not needed. It would prove

11
unsatisfactory to rely on the language of the law to introduce the life
stories and misadventures that lie ahead. It will be far better to accompany
Professor Jurus, Pru, and their supporting cast of characters as they forge
their own way through the ethical thickets and questions of justice which
they encounter.

Endnotes
1. Murphy v. Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor, 378 U.S. 52, 55
(1964).

12
13
Chapter 1

The Goldfish Bowl

E THAN ANDREW JURUS was alone on the jogging path, or at least the
stretch within his view. He clipped along the riverside in the chill of the
emerging dawn. Two men were fishing from a rowboat. The sweet smell
of ripened apples spilled and receded in invisible air pockets as he ran. A
stocking cap was pulled snugly over his closely cropped salt and pepper
hair and a tube-shaped turtleneck—one of the best purchases he had made
—cradled his chin, leaving only a brief swath of grayish eyes, a sharp,
longish nose, and thin lips exposed to the air. He cherished this time, and
he needed it. It was a time when he did some of his best thinking, or rather
when his best thoughts came to him, unbidden and uncontrolled. It was a
time when, as much as he could, he left behind the skein of being
Professor Jurus, escaped the cloister of his office, and lost himself in the
rhythm of morning. It was the time when he felt most alive.
Later he would teach his first class of the day, an introductory level
undergraduate course in its inaugural offering, called Issues in Justice.
The title was imprecise, bordering on a misnomer, although he doubted he
would be called on it. His grounding was in law, a discipline only
tenuously connected to justice. The class itself sampled a hodgepodge of
issues which he personally found to be interesting, ethically challenging,
and meriting exploration as exercises in value clarification if nothing else.
Measured by the uncompromising tenor of class discussions, he
sometimes felt terribly alone in holding these opinions. He had never been
seriously pressed about how well the issues fit within the rubric of
“justice.”
He liked using case studies when he taught. His students could relate to
them and tended to be quite willing to grapple with the problems
confronting the people caught in their webs. Gradually, the students' focus
almost invariably shifted from trying to resolve the specific situation
before them to identifying the more general principles needed to govern

14
other cases that could be expected to present similar circumstances. When
it worked, Professor Jurus could take a back seat and allow the magic of
inductive reasoning to take hold upon his students. He thought it better to
sneak up on the meaning of justice in context than to invite hopelessly
abstract discussions outside of his students' frame of reference. They were
young, after all, and had limited life experience, which was not their fault.
He frequently was inclined to want to remind his students that the cases
they parsed were much more than abstractions purposed to serve as
vehicles for academic discussion, though he rarely yielded to that
temptation. Jurus's principal calling was college professor, but he also
took on select cases as a lawyer, something he considered important not
only because of the principles involved, but because of the people he
represented. His clients typically were individuals whose travails and
misadventures had immersed them, sometimes involuntarily and
sometimes wilfully, in circumstances where they had much—if not
everything—to lose in a court of law. Their lives gave painful birth to the
case decisions made in courtrooms, which then were sometimes reduced
to writing and assimilated into the greater corpus of the law. They were
not just bit players conjured up in a playwright's idle time.
Now well into his morning run, Jurus's thoughts settled on Yvette
Porter, her seven-year-old son Jeffy, and Jeffy's pet goldfish, Frank. Jurus
had a goldfish when he was Jeffy's age. He had brought it home from a
school fair, its carrying case a quart-size plastic bag filled with water and
secured at the top with a twist tie. From there, fish and water were
transferred to a small, rectangular aquarium carefully positioned on the
dresser next to his bed. The bottom of the aquarium was coated with a
layer of colored sand, and on the sand sat a sculpted castle with a jutting
flagpole. Ethan twice tapped a box of fish food and watched as the
granules dispersed in the water. His fish, the first fish he ever had, swam
in inquisitive circles, its mouth pursing and relaxing. He went to sleep.
When he awoke the next morning, his fish no longer swam. It floated
listlessly at the water's surface. His mother said this sort of thing always
happens and she would get him another fish, but she never did, probably
to spare him another such morning. They buried the fish together under a
bush in the back yard.
Jeffy Porter's goldfish Frank was a fixture in the bowl on the coffee
table in the living room of the apartment that Jeffy and his mother Yvette
called home. Frank had occupied this station for almost two years, a silent
sentry making his watery rounds. Jeffy's father did not live with them and
Jeffy rarely saw him. Yvette had not married him and she had dated

15
different men over the past several years. Her relationships with them
were not always happy. Some were frighteningly stormy. Yvette was
diminutive in stature but grandly spirited. When she argued, which she did
often, her words spewed forth in screams which, when decipherable, could
make a sailor blush. She was never physically violent. This was not
always true of the men in her life.
Yvette had been dating Carlos for the past three months. They had first
met while standing in line at a movie theater. Yvette was accompanied by
her sister and Carlos had gone with one of his friends. Having struck up a
conversation outside the theater, the four sat together and then went out
for drinks after the movie ended. Carlos called Yvette the next evening
and they began seeing one another regularly. Yvette had recently cooled
on the relationship. She was fiercely independent and Carlos had a
possessive streak that rubbed her the wrong way. Each of them had a
temper and, predictably, their clashing personalities had produced
explosive arguments. Yvette had had enough. She had told Carlos that she
no longer wished to see him. He nevertheless stopped by unannounced at
her apartment at 8:00 one Monday evening. Jeffy sat on the living room
floor, drawing in front of the television.
“Where were you last night?” Carlos demanded of Yvette. “Why didn't
you answer when I called?” He had stormed into the apartment without
knocking, bypassing any semblance of a greeting.
“What are you doing barging into my apartment? Who invited you over
here? Get out!” screamed Yvette.
“Answer me, woman,” said Carlos, “and don't tell me what to do.”
“Get the hell out of here, and get out now!” shrieked Yvette, ramping
up her volume. “I don't answer to the likes of you. Get out and stay out!
Leave me alone! It's over. Go! Get out! Now!”
“Don't you talk to me that way,” Carlos snarled. “I'm warning you.”
“Warning me? Warning me? What's that mean, ‘warning me’? What
the hell are you talking about?”
“I'll show you what it means!” shouted Carlos.
Carlos smelled of alcohol. He was not tall but he was powerfully built,
and stocky. Veins bulged at his temples. He strode deeper into the
apartment, advancing toward Yvette.
Jeffy sat frozen on the living room floor, staring up helplessly into the
escalating chaos. Afraid to keep looking, he wrapped his head in his arms
and curled into the carpet. He felt Carlos nearby and then heard the sound
of shattering glass as something crashed heavily into the living room wall.

16
 “I'll stomp you like this fish,” Carlos yelled at Yvette. “Hey, Jeffy, look
here. Look see what your mama's gone and made me do. Look here at
your little fishy.”
Jeffy looked up. Water stained the wall and dripped onto the carpet.
Glass shards littered the room. He saw Frank straining on the floor,
arching, struggling against the hostile environment in his suddenly
transformed world. And then Carlos's boot descended, twisted, and Frank
disappeared. In his place was left a nondescript goo-like smear. What
might have been an eye gave hint of a baleful, reproachful stare.
“You goddamn son of a bitch!” Yvette had never been so angry in her
life. She wanted to kill Carlos. Instead, she took Jeffy in her arms. She
screamed at the top of her lungs until Carlos at last withdrew from the
apartment, slamming the door behind him. Yvette called 911. She sobbed
as she cradled her son. Jeffy trembled, whimpering miserably for Frank.
Jurus learned about these events directly from Yvette and Jeffy. He had
a soft spot for animals generally, and a particular fondness for the
Leighton Animal Protection Society, LAPS, and its no-kill animal shelter.
This is where he had found his pet dog Baffin, part Labrador and other
parts unknown, a mix that had produced a relentlessly angelic disposition
and a relationship of reciprocal, unconditional devotion. Jurus now
represented LAPS on a pro bono basis and had helped the Society
navigate through the red tape needed to acquire and preserve its status as a
non-profit organization. When Cheryl Colbert, LAPS's Director, asked
Jurus if he would consider signing on as a special prosecutor to assist the
District Attorney's office in pursuing criminal charges against Carlos, “to
get justice for Frank and Jeffy,” Jurus initially was uncertain. As a general
rule, he was much more comfortable defending people than prosecuting
them. After speaking with Yvette and Jeffy, his misgivings had vanished.
Jurus swung up the narrow trail from the jogging path to the road and
headed for home, less than a mile ahead. He would shower, let Baffin out
to renew her acquaintance with the morning in their modest back yard,
have coffee and breakfast while scanning the Leighton Gazette for items
of interest—the New York Times would come later, at his office computer
—and then be off to campus. Today was a teaching day.
Twenty-five students were enrolled in his Issues of Justice class. On
any given day he could expect 18 to 20 to attend. The class met twice
weekly from 9:00 to 10:20, which represented the break of day for many
undergraduates, whose circadian rhythms were in perpetual rebellion
against the Registrar's provincial scheduling practices. Jurus often began
his class sessions “off syllabus,” departing from the day's assigned topics

17
to comment on other matters, even if they had nothing to do with the
planned lesson. The only prerequisite was that he found the items to be
thought-provoking, making a boundless set of issues fair game. Still
preoccupied with his musings while jogging, he decided to sample
reactions to what had transpired, altering names and a few minor details to
avoid compromising Yvette and Jeffy's privacy.
“Make him pay for a new fishbowl,” said Donovan. “He's got no right
to go in there and break their fishbowl. I'd make him clean up the mess,
too. And he should get the kid a new fish.”
Jurus concealed a sigh. Donovan always could be counted on to get
discussion going. Maybe this was as good a place as any to start.
Prudence Durham rolled her eyes. “Pru,” as she preferred to be called,
was one of the most intellectually energetic students Jurus had
encountered in years. She was just a sophomore and had yet to declare a
major. Like many of her peers, she was dressed in pajama pants, or maybe
sweats (Jurus found it difficult to discriminate), and her blondish hair
tumbled from a loosely formed pile on the top of her head. Not always
finding the time to complete assigned readings, she nevertheless had an
uncanny knack for zeroing in on the heart of even the most complicated
issues and then divining a creative and often exquisitely sensible
resolution. Her views sometimes shifted with testing, but others far more
commonly eventually came around to her way of thinking. She was
frequently impatient, and not always tactful, in responding to her
classmates' arguments.
“For crying out loud,” Pru said in exasperation, “he didn't just knock it
off the table with his elbow and then trip on the fish. He did it on purpose.
The guy's sadistic. He's violent. He killed the little boy's fish and he'd
probably do it again. He needs to be punished.”
“You don't lock somebody up for breaking a fishbowl,” replied
Donovan. “He didn't kill anybody. He squished a fish. No different from
filleting it and eating it. What do you want to call that, ‘fishy-cide’? You
want to convict him for murdering a fish? Get the boy a new fish and tell
Hubert [the pseudonym Jurus had used for Carlos] to leave his mom and
him alone.”
In this exchange Jurus heard echoes of the law's historical and more
recent conception and treatment of animals—or rather, animals of the
nonhuman variety. Not that long ago, within this country's legal tradition,
domesticated animals were considered the property of the humans who
owned them. They had no identity, rights, or interests independent of that

18
status. They could (and often still can) be bought and sold, slaughtered for
market, used for scientific experimentation, and otherwise dealt with in
ways indistinguishable from other commodities. As such, their value was
measured, like other property, exclusively in economic terms. The losses
suffered in a fire that claimed a farmer's pigs and a fire that claimed his
barn were calculated and compensated in the same way. Property is
property.
Gradually, begrudgingly, the law began to change. Animal cruelty laws
defined as a crime, usually a low grade misdemeanor, the mistreatment of
at least some kinds of animals (those used in agriculture often were
exempt) by intentionally causing them unnecessary pain, or by denying
them the food or shelter they needed for survival. Federal and state
regulations limited the funding made available for some types of research
that relied on select animal species. In many states, cruelty to animals
under particular circumstances, such as when directed against household
pets, now qualified as a felony. Several areas of law nevertheless clung
stubbornly to the notion of animals as property, as fungible goods of the
same order as other commercial possessions. Under this conception, the
goldfish bowl that formerly had adorned Yvette's coffee table was worth
considerably more than Frank himself. Jeffy—much like Jurus when he
had his brief encounter with a goldfish as a boy—had acquired Frank for
free at a local charity event. The goldfish bowl cost $10.95 at Walmart.
“Do you have any pets, Donovan?” Pru was taking aim at her prey.
“Yeah, we have a family dog. Sparky. Got him at the shelter.”
Pru was eyeing Donovan's iPod and his laptop computer. “O.K., so say
you got him for 10 dollars from the shelter and then paid to get him shots
and have him neutered. Now let's say you're sitting at home with Sparky
and you have your music going on your $200 iPod and you're working
away on your $1200 laptop. All of a sudden a fire breaks out in your
room. You have to get out in a hurry and you can only take one thing with
you. What's it gonna be: Sparky, the iPod, or the computer?”
Donovan saw where this was going. “Look, we're not talking about
somebody's dog. We're talking about a goldfish. Goldfish swim around in
circles all day. That's all they do. Before you know it, they're belly-up and
you have to get yourself another one. Happens all the time.”
Tasha, another student in the class, entered the discussion. “It's one
thing for a fish to go belly-up. That didn't happen here. He killed the fish.
And he did it in front of the little boy.”
Taylor rallied in support of Donovan. “I'll bet that same little boy's done

19
the exact same thing, but he just calls it ‘fishing.’ That's what you do
when you go fishing. You kill a fish. I've gone fishing since I was seven,
like this boy. The fish is just as dead. That's no crime.”
“I'm not talking about it from the fish's point of view,” said Tasha. “I go
fishing. I eat fish. Fish are fish. But I'm looking at Hubert here. That man's
evil. He did it on purpose to hurt the lady and her little boy. And how do
you think that boy feels, his pet fish stomped on like that? No, that man's
got to be punished for doing that.”
Pru pressed on. “What if this isn't the little boy's goldfish swimming in
circles in a bowl all his life, but some dolphin swimming free in the ocean
getting caught up in a tuna boat's net and they just let it die? Or what if it's
some elephant killed by poachers who want its tusks for ivory? Or what if
it's your pet dog Sparky, Donovan? Don't you care about the dolphin, or
the elephant, or Sparky? Don't you care that they swim and roam the
jungles and chase tennis balls and squirrels and have a life? Is it only
about Hubert and about how the little boy feels?”
Jurus's thoughts strayed to one 4th of July when a group of pre-
adolescent boys had amused themselves by lobbing firecrackers over
Jurus's backyard fence, into Baffin's domain. Jurus had not been home at
the time. When he returned he discovered the M-80 and cherry bomb
casings. He did not know precisely what Baffin had endured. He knew it
could not have been pleasant. Pru's salvo reminded him of the 19th
century passage, oft-quoted by animal rights activists, written by British
philosopher Jeremy Bentham.
The day may come when the rest of the animal creation may acquire
those rights which never could have been withholden from them but
by the hand of tyranny. The French have already discovered that the
blackness of the skin is no reason why a human being should be
abandoned without redress to the caprice of a tormentor. It may one
day come to be recognized that the number of the legs, the villosity of
the skin, or the termination of the os sacrum are reasons equally
insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the same fate. What
else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of
reason, or perhaps the faculty of discourse? But a full-grown horse or
dog is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as a more
conversable animal, than an infant of a day or a week or even a
month, old. But suppose they were otherwise, what would it avail?
The question is not, Can they reason? nor Can they talk? but, Can
they suffer?1

20
 “Aw, geez, Pru, now you're going too far,” said Donovan. “Next you're
going to want to ban hunting, outlaw leather shoes, and we're all eating
tofu sandwiches instead of hamburgers.”
Jurus knew it was coming. It was a point worth exploring, indeed, one
that he hoped would nag for a reply—agitate either for endorsement or
active resistance—when some remnant of the conversation penetrated life
beyond the classroom. But now he felt it was time to redirect the class
discussion, to ground it more concretely in what had transpired between
Carlos, Yvette, Jeffy, and Frank, and in the law.
“I think we would all agree that there's a difference,” Jurus offered,
“between a personal code of conduct—a way of behaving that you find
agreeable to your own way of thinking—and a rule that ought to be
binding on everyone, whether they like it or not. Pru might opt for tofu
and Donovan might prefer McDonald's. Maybe they can agree to disagree:
vive la difference. At some point we're going to impose on their personal
choices. Pru won't be able to snack on peyote, at least not lawfully,” he
continued, drawing from her a look of protest, “and cannibalism will be
off limits to Donovan” (this, to a grumble from Donvovan and general
titters) “even if he takes a liking to Hannibal Lecter's menu.” Silence of
the Lambs was one of the few movies Jurus had seen. He often was
hopelessly adrift when trying to make sense of contemporary cultural
referents. His students just as frequently were baffled by his own
examples. “Let's get back to Hubert and Carol and Andy [the latter two
names substituted for Yvette and Jeffy] and their fish. What kinds of
‘binding-on-everyone’ rules did Hubert break, and what should be the
consequences?”
Naomi raised her hand. “Well, he shouldn't have come into their
apartment without permission. That's breaking and entering, or
trespassing, or something. And he smashed the fishbowl. You can't just
destroy somebody's property. He'll have to pay for that. That ought to be a
crime, too.”
“O.K.,” said Jurus, “no disagreement there. We have laws against
barging into somebody else's home uninvited. And if he broke the
fishbowl on purpose, which he did, it seems fair that he should have to
pay for a new one to replace it. Carol could sue him, civilly, if it's worth it
to her. That would compensate her for damages—‘make her whole’ again.
We might also want to think about punishing Hubert for breaking the
fishbowl. We're all familiar with vandalism, intentionally damaging or
destroying someone else's property. That's a crime, so now we're coming
at Hubert with double barrels, a civil lawsuit so Carol can recover her

21
losses, and a criminal prosecution—brought in the name of the State, or
the People, or society as a whole, rather than on behalf of Carol, Andy,
and the goldfish. Now, there's a different purpose: to punish Hubert. Why
might we want to punish him, and not just make him pay back Carol and
replace the fishbowl?”
“Because he's a creep,” volunteered Isaiah.
“Is it a crime to be a creep?” asked Jurus.
Isaiah was forced to elaborate. “Because he's a creep who smashed the
fishbowl.”
“I think those hunters who club seals in the head so they can sell their
pelts are creeps,” said Pru, “and that ought to be a crime. Why is it wrong
to smash a fishbowl but all right to bash a defenseless seal in the head?”
“There you go again,” protested Donovan. “You're bound and
determined to make it a crime to eat hamburgers. How do you think they
kill those cows? They bash 'em in the head with this big old power
hammer. Wham.”
Jurus intervened. “Let's stick with the goldfish. Did Hubert commit a
crime when he killed the goldfish? Does he deserve to be punished for it,
maybe locked up in jail? Is it different from just going fishing? Somebody
propose a rule—should there be a rule of law that makes it a crime for
Hubert to kill the goldfish swimming around in Carol and Andy's
apartment, but not kill the same goldfish when it's swimming around in a
pond? Should both be a crime? Neither?”
It probably was too big of a question, framed too early in the
discussion, to expect a correspondingly grand response. Silence
descended.
“You're a creep if you act like Hubert. You're not a creep to go fishing.
That's what it boils down to,” said Isaiah.
“Does how he kills the fish make a difference?” prodded Jurus. “What
if after Hubert pulled the fish out of the pond on his fishing line, he let it
flop around on the ground, and then stepped on it with his boot? Should
that matter?”
“Nah,” Isaiah responded, “now he's just putting it out of its misery. It's
quicker than dangling on the end of a hook and flopping around
suffocating. That's no crime.”
“Does why he kills the fish matter? What if it has nothing to do with
putting the fish out of its misery? Suppose he sees Carol and Andy
walking nearby. He and Carol have been arguing. He wants to get back at
her through Andy. He knows Andy has a pet goldfish. So he calls them

22
over, tosses the fish he caught on the ground, tells Andy to watch, and
then he stomps on it with his boot? Now, do we have a crime?”
“Yeah,” said Isaiah, “now he's a creep. He's being mean to that boy.
He's doing it on purpose. Lock him up.”
“What if Andy's not watching? What if Hubert's just a bully, or mean,
and he likes to make animals suffer? That's why he grinds his boot into the
fish, so he can get this perverse sort of pleasure through the fish's pain. He
enjoys it. Now where are we?”
“It's not about the fish,” insisted Isaiah. “A squished fish is a squished
fish. It doesn't care why it got squished. I still say he can pull it out of the
water and let it drown—or whatever happens when you're a fish and
you're out of the water and can't breathe—or he can stomp on it, either
one, and for whatever reason he wants, so long as he's not doing it to be
mean and hurt the little boy.”
Pru's hand shot up and her head was shaking. “Oh, that's just great. Let
him squish the fish for whatever reason he wants, as long as we're not
looking. We don't care about the little fishy. What if it's not a little fish?
What if it's Donovan's dog, Sparky? Stomp on Sparky, and Sparky's going
to whine and bark and yelp and scream, and he's going to do that whether
or not we can see and hear him. And what if it's not Sparky he's stomping
on, but little Andy? Nobody's around to see or hear. Does that make it all
right? It's wrong either way. It's not about how the fish is killed, and it's
not about why it's killed, or who's watching when it's killed. What matters
is that it's killed. Any way you map it out, the fish is dead, dead, dead.
And Hubert is guilty, guilty, guilty,” said Pru. “Period. Case closed.”
“First, the fish, then those hamburgers,” warned Donovan. “Sounds to
me like you're mixing up what the professor called your personal code of
conduct with rules that everybody's supposed to follow, Pru. The man's no
criminal just because he likes to go fishing. And if a fish can't breathe
once it's pulled out of the water, what's wrong with stepping on it, make it
die quicker? Same difference. And like Isaiah said, the fish doesn't care
why it got stomped on. It's no crime to be a creep.”
Professor Jurus interrupted. “I don't think we're going to solve this one
right now. Maybe we can come back to it later. Let's get on to our topic
for today....” Even as he made this transition, his thoughts spun ahead to
the criminal charges filed against Carlos and his role as special prosecutor.
There should be little difficulty securing Carlos's conviction for
destroying the fishbowl. The jury wouldn't like his behavior and his
conduct fell squarely under the definition of malicious destruction of

23
personal property. However, the fishbowl was inexpensive and the offense
would simply be a misdemeanor. Jurus was unsure whether the jury would
find that Carlos had entered Yvette's apartment unlawfully. He probably
would claim that he had knocked and Yvette had let him in. Even if they
believed that he had come through the door uninvited, Carlos would only
be guilty of misdemeanor criminal trespass.
The aspect of Carlos's behavior that Jurus thought was most offensive,
and why he had agreed to serve as special prosecutor, was the way he had
killed Frank, including its impact on Jeffy and his mother. But was it a
crime to kill a goldfish? Under state law the answer appeared to be . . .
maybe . . . or, it depends. The discussion among his Issues in Justice
students had danced around the law's definitional lines.
Goldfish were not a protected species under state law. It was perfectly
lawful to kill them for sport, as in fishing, or, if one had the appetite, to
make a meal of one—filleting them, as Donovan had put it. Pru's moral
compass, which did not tolerate that a goldfish's life should be expendable
to satisfy such human whims, clearly differed from the criminal code.
On the other hand, the law appeared to take an interest in how, and
sometimes why at least some kinds of animals are killed. State law
generally forbid acts of “cruelty to animals,” wild or tame, and whether
belonging to the person him- or herself or to another. But did Carlos's
conduct amount to “cruelty”? The statute offered a definition. “‘Cruelty’
to an animal includes every act, omission, or neglect, whereby
unjustifiable physical pain, suffering or death is caused or permitted.”2
Jurus couldn't be sure whether Carlos's behavior qualified. Who could tell
what physical pain or suffering Frank had endured? Still, Carlos arguably
had caused Frank's “unjustifiable . . . death.” Either way, Jurus thought
this charge could be presented to a jury with a reasonable chance of their
finding Carlos guilty. Yet “cruelty to animals” was still a misdemeanor; in
the law's eyes it deserved no greater punishment than smashing a lifeless
glass fishbowl.
Unless, that is, Carlos's conduct amounted to “aggravated” cruelty to an
animal, an offense that was defined as a felony.
A person is guilty of aggravated cruelty to animals when, with no
justifiable purpose, he or she intentionally kills or intentionally
causes serious physical injury to a companion animal with
aggravated cruelty.
“Aggravated cruelty” shall mean conduct which (i) is intended to
cause extreme physical pain, or (ii) is done or carried out in an

24
 especially depraved or sadistic manner.
“Companion animal” means any dog or cat, and shall also mean
any other domesticated animal normally maintained in or near the
household of the owner or person who cares for such other
domesticated animal. “Companion animal” shall not include a “farm
animal”....3
If it would be difficult to prove that Carlos had caused Frank to suffer
“unjustifiable physical pain,” under the misdemeanor “cruelty to animals”
statute, Jurus thought it would be at least as difficult to prove that Carlos
“intended to cause” Frank to suffer “extreme physical pain,” as
contemplated by the first part of the felony “aggravated cruelty to
animals” law. But perhaps a stronger case could be made under the second
part—that by directing Jeffy to watch him stomp on Frank, Carlos had
killed Frank “in an especially depraved or sadistic manner.” This
provision seemed to capture at least part of Tasha's concern: “He did it to
hurt the little boy.” And, at the heart of it, it sounded like another way of
saying that cruelty to animals is a felony if you're both cruel and a creep.
Isaiah would be on board.
But there was yet another stumbling block. None of this mattered unless
Frank, a goldfish, could be dignified under the statute as a “companion
animal.” Jurus inferred that this restriction on the felony charge had been
hammered out as a compromise necessary to gain the law's passage. The
explicit exclusion of “farm animals” from the scope of the aggravated
cruelty to animals statute solidified his belief that lobbyists had their
hands on the lawmaking process. Was Frank or was he not a companion
animal? The law was far from clear. Cats and dogs, which, like farm
animals, presumably were of interest to some constituents and their
lobbyists, were expressly protected. Then it became more of a free for all.
“‘Companion animal’. . . shall also mean any other domesticated animal
normally maintained in or near the household of the owner or person who
cares for such other domesticated animal.”
Jeffy would certainly have considered Frank to be a companion. Cats
and dogs were not allowed in the apartment complex where he lived, so he
had been overjoyed when his mother agreed that he could have a fish.
Jeffy devotedly cared for Frank, feeding him, greeting him in the morning,
tapping on his bowl to say hello, just as he would have looked after
another kind of pet. But then again, he might have done the same with a
frog, or a grasshopper, or the ants in an ant farm. Would this be another
question for the jury? The statute required that a “companion animal”

25
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When they began to move again, he had lost all control of himself.
He shivered like a man in a high fever, his teeth were chattering, and
he was sobbing ungovernably. He had afterwards a confused
memory of how they proceeded slowly down the Haymarket into
Whitehall, and how a dozen helpers at once sought to lift him from
his horse outside the door of the Treasury.

2
Jeremy’s next distinct impression was that of sitting in a small room
while the Speaker poured down his throat a glass of neat smoke-
flavored whisky. It revived him, and he straightened himself and
stood up, but he found that his back ached and that his legs were
unsteady. The Speaker forced him down again and bent over him
tenderly, muttering caressing and soothing words at the back of his
throat.
“You will feel better presently,” he said at last; and he went out softly,
looking back and smiling as he went. When he was alone, Jeremy
rose again and walked towards the door, but was checked at once
by a great fatigue and weakness. He looked round the room, and,
seeing a couch, threw himself at full length upon it.
“I wish I could go to sleep,” he murmured to himself. But his brain,
though it was exhausted, was so clear and active that he gave up all
hope of it. When, a minute later, sleep came to him, it would have
astonished him if he could have noticed it coming.
He woke to wonder how long he had been unconscious. It had been
about noon when they had arrived at the Treasury; but now the tall
trees outside the window hid the sky and prevented him guessing by
the sun what hour it was. He turned over on to his back and stared
up lazily at the ceiling. The confusion which had at first overwhelmed
his mind, and the unnatural clarity which had followed it, were both
gone, and he felt that he was normal again, not even very much
tired. The indolence and calm of the spirit which he now experienced
were delicious: they were like the physical sensations which succeed
violent exercise.
He looked down again with a start, as he heard the door quietly
opened; and he saw the Lady Eva standing there. She had a
mysterious smile on her lips, and her whole attitude suggested that
she was bracing herself to meet something which frightened but did
not displease her. Jeremy rose abruptly, his heart beating, and tried
to speak; but he could not get out a single word.
“My father sent me to ask if you were better,” said the Lady Eva in a
low voice. As he did not answer she closed the door behind her and
advanced into the room. “Are you better?” she repeated, a little more
firmly. Jeremy took a step towards her and hesitated. The situation
seemed plain, and yet, at the last moment of decision, his will was
paralyzed by a fear that he might be absurdly deceiving himself.
“I am much better now,” he answered, with an effort. “I only feel a
little tired.”
“There is a banquet at five o’clock. I hope you will be able to attend
it.”
Jeremy shivered slightly and his wits began to return to him. “Will it
be like—like this morning?” he enquired with a faint smile.
She smiled a little in reply. “Don’t you want us to be grateful to you?”
she said. “You know what you have saved us from—all of us. How
can we ever reward you?”
“That’s my chance,” Jeremy’s mind insisted again and again. “That’s
my chance ... that’s my chance ... I ought to speak now.” But the
short interval of her silence slipped away, and she went on gently:
“You must expect to be congratulated and toasted. Will you be
strong enough to bear it? My father will be disappointed if you are
not.”
It was at that moment, quite irrelevantly and by a process he did not
understand, that Jeremy took the Lady Eva in his arms. Afterwards
he had no consciousness, no recollection, of the instant in which
their lips had met. There had simply been an insurgence of his
passion and of his loneliness, ending in an action that blinded him.
The next thing he remembered was folding her bowed head into his
shoulder, stroking her smooth hair with a trembling hand, and
muttering hoarsely and helplessly, “Dearest ... dear one....”
Then they were sitting side by side on the couch and their positions
were reversed. His head lay on her shoulder, while her fingers
moved gently up and down his cheek. He stayed thus for some
minutes without speaking or moving. He had been in love before and
had not escaped the mood in which young men picture the surrender
of the beloved. He had even more than once, after a long or a short
wooing, held a girl in his arms and kissed her. But he had never yet
seen this sudden and astonishing transformation of a stranger,
mysterious and incalculable, whose faults and peculiarities were as
obvious as her beauty was enchanting, into a creature who could
thus silently and familiarly comfort him. The moment before she had
been some one else, the Lady Eva, a person as to whose opinion of
himself he was uncertain and curious, that most baffling and
impenetrable of all enigmas, another human being, divided from him
by every barrier that looks or speech can put in the way of
understanding. And now she was at once a lover, a part of himself, a
spirit known by his without any need of words. He adjusted himself
slowly to the miracle.
Presently he raised his head and searched her eyes keenly. She
bore his gaze without flinching; and something again drew their
mouths together. Then Jeremy said,
“I must speak to your father at once. Do you suppose he will feel that
I have presumed on his gratitude to me?”
“I know he will not,” she answered. “I am sure he meant to give me
to you. Do you think that otherwise....” She stopped, and there was a
long pause. “But I wanted you ... first....” Again she could not go on,
but began to sob a little, quietly. Jeremy, helpless and inexperienced,
could think of nothing better to do than to gather her into his arms
and kiss her hair. His sudden comprehension of her seemed to have
vanished with as little warning as it came. She was again a
mysterious creature; but now the mystery was a new one. He was
like a man who, after the triumph of accomplishing a steep ascent,
finds that he has reached no more than the first slope of the
mountain.
When her face was hidden she continued with more confidence, but
in a low and broken voice. “I wanted you to tell me that you ...
wanted me, before my father gave me to you. I thought ... perhaps
you did ... I hoped....” She freed herself from his arms and sat up,
looking at him with proud eyes, though her face was blazing. “It is
better than being given to you only as a reward for winning a battle,”
she finished deliberately.
Jeremy experienced the most inexplicable feeling of the young lover
—admiration for the beloved. He wished to hold her away from him,
to contemplate the lovely face, the gallant eyes, to tell her how
wonderful she was, and how he could thank Heaven for her even if
he might never touch her hand again. And on the heels of this came
a great rush of unbearable longing, with the realization that human
tongue was not able to express, or human nerves to endure, his love
for her. He turned dizzy and faint, his sight went black, and he
stretched out his arms vaguely and helplessly. When she gave
herself into them, he clasped her fiercely as though by force he could
make her part of himself, and she bore his clumsy violence gladly.
“This hurts me,” he said in the puzzled voice of a child, when he had
let her go again. She gave him with wet eyes a sufficient answer.
Then he went on with the same simplicity, “I have been so lonely
here—I didn’t know how lonely. Are we going to be happy now? I am
afraid ... of what may happen....” She kissed him once and rose.
“I must go now,” she said steadily. “Oh, we shall be happy—this
dread means nothing, it is only because we are so happy.” He
started and looked at her, made uneasy by her echo of his thoughts.
“Good-by, my dear,” she said. She left the room quietly without his
raising a hand to keep her back.
When she had gone his feelings were too violent to find vent in any
movement. He sat quite still for some minutes until his brain was
calmer and he could at last stand up and walk about the room. It was
thus that the Speaker found him; and Jeremy stopped guiltily and
stood waiting. The old man was evidently still in good humor. He
stroked his chin and regarded Jeremy with beaming eyes.
“I take it you are feeling better,” he pronounced drily, after a
moment’s silence.
“I am quite well,” Jeremy answered hurriedly, “very well. I must tell
you at once, sir——”
The Speaker stopped him with a gesture. “I know. I passed my
daughter in the corridor leading to her room. You want to tell me that
you have taken my gift before I could make it. Nevertheless, I shall
have the great joy of putting her hand in yours at the banquet to-
night.”
“I can’t thank you ...” Jeremy mumbled.
The Speaker made a benevolent movement of his hand. “What you
and she have done,” he went on, “is much against our customs, but
we are not ordinary people, you and I and she. You will be happy
together, and it will make me happy to see you so. And I think you
are young enough to get from her the help that I should have had, if
there had not been so many years between us. She has something
of me in her that you will be able to use. You will need to use it, for
you will have a great deal to do, both now and afterwards, when I am
gone and you are the Speaker.”
Jeremy inclined his head in silence.
“The banquet is in half-an-hour from now,” the Speaker said, turning
towards the door. “If you are well enough to attend it, you must go
and dress at once.”
 CHAPTER XII
NEW CLOUDS

1
IT was in a state of tranquil elation that Jeremy left his room to take
his place at the banquet in the great hall. All day one emotion had
been chasing another through his mind, like clouds hurrying across a
storm-swept sky. Now it seemed that the last cloud had gone and
had left a radiant evening serenity. He had been crushed by
congratulations that morning. In the afternoon his love for the Lady
Eva had exceeded his endurance. But to-night he felt himself able to
bear the last degree of joy from either. He dressed with care, and, a
minute or so before the hour, walked with a light and confident step
through the corridors of the Treasury. He approached the hall by way
of the private passages and turned into an ante-room, where, on
ceremonial occasions, the Speaker and his family and his guests
were accustomed to wait until the proper moment for taking their
seats.
Here he found himself alone. After lighting an Irish cigar, he strolled
jauntily up and down the room with his hands in his pockets,
occasionally humming a bar or two of one of the songs of the
nineteen-twenties—the last expressions of a frivolous and hilarious
phase of society—or lightly kicking the furniture in the sheer height of
his spirits. Not once since the moment of his waking in the
Whitechapel Meadows had he been in such a mood. Something had
happened to him of which he had no experience before; and its
paradoxical result was to make him thoroughly at home in the new
world for the first time. He felt like a man who in choppy water has
been bumping up and down against the side of a quay and has at
last succeeded in making himself fast. And, even in this gay and
careless spirit, he was deeply conscious of what it was that had
made him gay and careless. He continued, even through his light-
hearted and somewhat ludicrous maneuvers up and down the room,
through his tuneless but jaunty renderings of vulgar songs, to praise
Heaven for having made the Lady Eva and for having given her to
him. He knew that it was because of her that he was fit, as he told
himself, reverting to earlier habits of phrase, to push a house over.
He did not, as he had hoped, get a moment alone with her before the
banquet began. The Speaker beckoned him out without entering the
room, and he could only catch a glimpse of her, by the side of the
Lady Burney, as they entered the hall together. Immediately on their
entrance the guests, who were already assembled, rose to their feet
and began to cheer deafeningly. The sound had on Jeremy’s spirits
an effect contrary to that which it had had in the morning. It elated
him; and when the Speaker, with a hand on his shoulder, drew him
into a more prominent place on the dais, he bowed without self-
consciousness. At last the Speaker raised his hand authoritatively
and obtained silence. There was a shuffling of chairs; and it seemed
to be supposed that the banquet would begin. But the Speaker cried
in a thundering voice:
“My friends!” A profound and instant hush fell on the assembly. “My
friends,” he continued less loudly. “It is not our custom to make
speeches before dinner or my custom to make long speeches at any
time. I do not intend to say now what is in all our minds. But I believe
that good news is the better for being soon told; and I have news to
give you which I would like you to enjoy during dinner as well as after
it. Jeremy Tuft, to whom under Heaven we owe our lives and our
freedom to-night, has asked for the hand of my daughter, and she
has consented to marry him.” The hush continued, while he said
briskly in a low but audible tone, “Your right hand, girl—your right
hand, Jeremy.” Then he went on again more loudly, “I put their hands
together. I am the first to wish them happiness.” In the uproar that
followed, Jeremy had a confused notion that he and the Lady Eva
bowed to the guests in the hall with equal composure. He was vividly
aware that the Lady Burney had kissed him, this time on both
cheeks. A lull followed, in which his condition of exaltation enabled
him to express his gratitude and joy in a few words without faltering.
And then suddenly it was all over. He was sitting next to the Lady
Eva, saying something to her, he knew not what, in an undertone;
and the banquet had begun.
When he was calm enough to look around him, he saw that the table
on the dais at which he was sitting was occupied by all the most
influential of the “big men” that were in the habit of attending the
Treasury. The Speaker sat at the middle of one side. The Lady
Burney sat on his right, and beyond her the Canadian, on whose
face for once the ordinary expression of grinning malice had given
way to one of sinister displeasure. On his left was the Lady Eva, next
to whom came Jeremy. Jeremy’s neighbor was the wife of a “big
man” whom he knew but slightly, and who, to his relief, was at once
engaged in conversation by the apparently still careworn and
desponding dignitary, Henry Watkins. From this survey Jeremy
turned with pleasure to the Lady Eva. Her mood chimed with his, and
he was in high spirits. Her eyes were gleaming, her color was bright,
and she talked lightly and without restraint. He noticed, too, with
some pleasure that she showed a healthy appetite and took a
sensible interest in good food. He was very hungry; and they talked
for some time about the dishes. She did not drink, however. Nothing
was served, indeed, no drinks were usual in England of that day,
save whisky and beer, both of which were produced in good quality
and consumed in large quantities. Jeremy, fearful of the effect either
might have on him in his already stimulated condition, drank whisky
sparingly, having weakened it with a great deal of water. So the
banquet went through its innumerable courses to the last of them. At
the end the servants cleared the table, and, with the costly Irish
cigars, great decanters were brought in. These contained a kind of
degenerate port which, for ceremonial reasons, was usually
produced on the greatest occasions. But it was very nasty; and most
persons confined themselves to a single glass of it, which they took
because, for some inscrutable reason, it had been the custom of
their ancestors.
The speeches, which began at this point, were excessively long and
tedious. Jeremy gathered that a succession of hour-long speeches
on every public occasion was one of the habits of the time, though it
seemed to him as incomprehensible as seemed in the twentieth
century the even longer sermons of an earlier period. Notable after
notable arose and made the same remarks about the victory and the
marriage, sometimes not even perceptibly varying the language. It
was only in Henry Watkins’s oration that he found any gleam of
interest.
It began dully enough. The man looked gloomy, and his utterance
was halting. Jeremy was at first soothed into sleepiness by the
monotonous voice. He decided that this great and wealthy man was
almost certainly a descendant of the charwoman from whom he had
had the earliest intimation that “trouble” was really in the air. There
was something unmistakably reminiscent both in his despondency
and in his stupidity. But all at once a new resemblance struck his
ears and stimulated his attention. Mrs. Watkins, in that fast fading
antiquity, had brought him bodements of ill; and this latest scion of
her line seemed to be playing the same part.
“This young man,” said Henry Watkins in stumbling accents, “has
delivered us all—I say, has delivered us all, from a great, a very
great misfortune. If greater, yes, if much greater misfortune should
threaten us, it is to him, it is to him, under Providence, and our wise
ruler, that we shall look for help. And I say, my friends, I say and
repeat,” he droned on, “that we must not regard ourselves as safe
from all misfortunes——”
The Speaker, one place removed from Jeremy, moved sharply,
knocked over a glass and scraped his foot on the floor. He
interrupted the flow of the speech; and the orator paused and looked
round at him, half grieved, half questioning. The Speaker took the
glance; and it seemed to Jeremy that it was in answer that he
frowned so savagely. The melancholy expression on Henry
Watkins’s face deepened by a shade and became dogged. He
continued with something of defiance in his voice.
“I say we ought not to think that we have seen the worst that can
happen to us. This—all this unexpected danger which we have
survived ought to teach us never again for a single moment to think
ourselves in safety.” He concluded abruptly and sat down. He had
apparently spoiled the Speaker’s joviality; and he had propounded to
Jeremy a riddle very hard of solution. Jeremy felt certain that some
purpose had lain behind his words, other than his usual pessimism,
and that the Speaker’s interruption had betokened something more
than his usual boredom.
“Do you know what he meant?” he asked of the Lady Eva; but she
shook her head. He glanced along the table to see if Thomas Wells’s
expression would throw any light on the matter. But he had left his
place and had moved away to talk to a friend at some distance.
Jeremy could not make out what it was all about, and gave it up. And
now the formal part of the banquet was over; and the guests began
to leave their places and to move about in the hall.
This was the signal for all who had ever spoken to Jeremy to come
to him and congratulate him. He observed in their various manners a
curious mixture of genuine homage and of assumed adulation of the
man who might soon be their ruler. In the midst of it he saw on the
outskirts of the crowd around him Roger Vaile, lounging with an air of
detachment and indifference. He broke off the conversation in which
he was engaged and forced a way to his friend.
“Roger!” he cried, taking him by the hand.
“Good luck to you, Jeremy,” Roger replied gently. “I’ve reason to be
pleased with myself now, haven’t I?—even though it was an
accident.”
“Be sure I shall never forget you, Roger,” Jeremy murmured; and
then, feeling in his reply something of the manner of a great man
towards a dependent, he blushed and was confused. Roger’s
answering smile was friendly; and before Jeremy could recover his
tongue he had slipped away. Soon half the guests had gone; for it
was an early race. When the hall was beginning to look empty he felt
a plucking at his sleeve from behind him; and turning he saw the
Lady Eva. He followed her into the little ante-room behind the hall
and found that they were alone there.
She shut the door behind them and opened her arms.
“Only a minute,” she whispered. “Oh, my dear, my dear, goodnight. I
am so happy.” He embraced her silently, and his eyes pricked.
Hardly had he released her before she had gone. He went back into
the hall and found the last guest departing, and the servants putting
out the candles. He wondered for a moment why all great days must
end with this flat moment; but the thought did not depress him. He
walked away, slow and unaccompanied, to his own room.
When he was there he busied himself for some moments with trifles
and delayed to undress. He wanted very much to lie awake for hours
so that he could taste again all the most exquisite moments of the
day that was just gone. He also desired with equal intensity to fall
asleep at once, so that he might begin the new day as soon as
possible. He had got so far as taking off his coat when there was a
discreet knocking at the door. He opened it and found a servant, who
said deferentially:
“The Speaker would like to see you at once, sir, in his own room.”
“All right,” Jeremy answered, picking up his coat. And then, when the
man had gone, he murmured to himself in sudden dread, “What can
it be? Oh, what can it be?”

2
Jeremy hastened down the stairs to the Speaker’s room in a state of
rapidly increasing agitation. He did not know, he could not imagine,
what it was that he feared; but he had been raised to so high a
pinnacle of joy that the least touch of the unexpected could set him
trembling and looking for evil. When he reached his object he found
the old man alone, seated sprawling in his great chair by the open
window, his wrinkled, thick-veined hands spread calmly on the
carven arms. Two or three candles stood on the table behind him,
flickering and guttering slightly in the faint night breeze.
“I am glad you have come at once, my son,” he observed, turning his
head a little, in a tone which showed no symptoms of trouble. “You
had not gone to bed, then? I wished to speak to you alone, before
the others have come that I have sent for. Sit down and listen to me.”
Jeremy drew up a smaller chair on the other side of the window and
obeyed.
“We have yet another battle before us,” the Speaker pronounced
abruptly.
Jeremy started. “What——” he began.
“Another battle,” the old man repeated. “Do not be distressed. I know
this is ill news for a bridegroom, yet it is not so bad as it seems.
When we returned this morning—it was after you had fainted at the
door and while you were still unconscious—I learnt that the
President of Wales had made up his mind, only a few days after the
Northerners, to march on London. I knew that there was trouble of
some kind in the west, but I had got no trustworthy news to show me
how far it had gone. But information came to me this morning that
the President and his army had passed round the Cotswolds and
were marching towards Oxford. The worst part of the news was that
the Gloucestershire wool-merchants had joined with him. Of course,
they were very much interested in what might happen to the
Chairman. That was what that gloomy dullard, Henry Watkins, was
hinting at in his speech to-night—I know you saw me frowning at
him. I tell you frankly I thought nothing of it. It was only the
Yorkshiremen that disturbed the others; and I took it for granted that
our victory would settle all quarrels at once.”
“Yes ...” Jeremy murmured doubtfully in the pause.
“Well, I was wrong. It seems that a survivor got away to the west this
morning, apparently just after Thomas Wells took the Chairman
prisoner. I don’t know how he went. I think he must have got on to
the railway somewhere and found an engine ready to move. He
could hardly have moved so fast otherwise. Anyway, he found the
President, with the greater part of his army, at Oxford—and the
President has sent a letter to me. It reached me only a few minutes
ago.” He stopped and ran a hand through his beard, regarding
Jeremy thoughtfully with tranquil eyes.
“Go on ... go on,” Jeremy whispered tensely.
“That was quick work, wasn’t it?” the Speaker ruminated. “He can’t
have started before seven this morning, because I’m sure the
Chairman wasn’t taken till then. The letter reached me here at a
quarter to midnight—less than seventeen hours. The President was
in a great hurry—I know him well, I can see him raging.” He checked
himself and smiled at Jeremy with a kind of genial malice. “You want
to know what he said in his letter? Well, he warned me that he would
hold me responsible for the Chairman’s safe-keeping; and he
summoned me to a conference at Oxford where the three of us were
to settle our differences and rearrange the affairs of the country.”
“And what answer will you make?” Jeremy managed to utter.
“I have ordered the messenger to be flogged by the grooms,” the
Speaker replied composedly. “I expect that they are flogging him
now. The only other answer we have to give, Jeremy, will be
delivered by your guns.”
“But this is terrible,” Jeremy cried, springing up from his chair. “You
don’t understand——”
“Rubbish, my friend,” the old man interrupted with an air of serene
commonsense. “It means only that the President does not know
what has happened. If he still wishes to fight when he knows—why,
then we will fight him. I hope he will wish it. Perhaps when he is
broken we shall have peace forever.”
Jeremy walked three or four times up and down the room, pressing
his hands together and trying vainly by a violent tension of all his
muscles to regain his composure.
“You don’t understand a bit,” he burst out at last, “what luck it all was.
I tell you it was luck, merely luck....” He stopped, stumbling and
stuttering, so much confounded by this unexpected and horrible
menace to his happiness, that he was unable to frame any words of
explanation.
The Speaker continued to smile at him. “You are not yourself to-
night, Jeremy,” he chided gently. “You are overwrought; and it is not
to be wondered at. You will find your next triumph less exciting.”
But Jeremy’s agitation only increased. It was not only his own future
that was at stake, but the Lady Eva’s also and his future with her.
“Can’t you make peace with him?” he demanded wildly.
“Peace——” the Speaker began in a more vehement tone. But
before he could go on the door was opened and two servants
appeared, dragging between them a torn and disheveled man,
whose bloodshot eyes were rolling madly in their sockets, and
whose face was white and twisted with pain. Just inside the room
they let go his arms, and he fell sprawling on the floor with a faint
moan.
“Peace!” cried the Speaker, rising from his chair and pointing at the
man. “That is the ambassador of peace I shall send back to the
President! Peace between us, I thank God, is impossible unless he
humbles himself to me!”
Jeremy took a step towards the prostrate figure and recoiled again,
seeing that the torn garments had been roughly pulled on over
lacerated and bleeding shoulders. He recovered himself and bent
down over the unhappy creature, whose breath came thick and short
through the writhing mouth. He looked up with horror in his eyes.
“This is ... this is the President’s messenger?” he muttered.
The Speaker nodded.
“But you didn’t do this to the men from Bradford. You let them go
back untouched.”
“I will make an end of these troubles!” Again Jeremy could see in the
old man a reincarnation of one of the vengeful prophets of the
ancient Jews. But the next moment the menacing attitude was
relaxed, and the Speaker, turning to the immobile servants, said
coldly: “Take this fellow out and lay him down in the courtyard. Tether
his horse fast beside him. When he is able to move, let him go back
without hindrance to his master and say what has been done to him.”
The men bowed, stooped over the moaning wretch and dragged him
roughly away. A profound silence followed his last inarticulate, half-
conscious complaints as he was borne down the corridor.
“And now,” said the Speaker, resuming his serenity of manner
without an effort, “now we must make our plans. I propose that we
shall march out at once and prepare to meet the President west of
London if he wishes to attack us; and I have decided that you shall
take command of the army.”
“I?” Jeremy exclaimed. “Oh, but——” He was overwhelmed by an
absurd confusion. Once again he was in the nightmare world,
struggling with shadows, wrestling with an incomprehensible mind on
which he could never get a grip. “I can’t command the army! I know
something about guns, but I’ve no experience of infantry. I
shouldn’t....” His protests faded away into silence before the
Speaker’s imperturbability. “Guns are all very well ... I don’t mind ... I
can’t....” These words jerked out and ceased, like the last spasmodic
drops from a fountain, when the water has been turned off at the
main. Then, when he himself supposed that he had finished, he
added suddenly with an air of conclusiveness: “I know something
about guns....”
The Speaker made no answer for a moment or two. When he did it
was slowly and with extreme deliberation. “You won this morning’s
battle for us,” he said, “by the use of guns. Our battle against the
President, if it is ever fought, will have to be won in the same way.
None of us properly understands how to do it but you. And, after all,
wasn’t there a great general in the old times, somewhere about your
time, who began his career in the artillery? What was his name? I
know so little of history; but I think it began with a B.”
“Napoleon,” Jeremy suggested with a half hysterical chuckle.
“Napoleon? Was that it? I thought it was some other name. Well,
then, if he could——”
“I won’t do it,” Jeremy suddenly uttered.
The door opened again, and the Canadian entered. He was wrapped
in a great furred gown, from the ample collar of which his face hardly
protruded, looking sharper and leaner than ever.
“You sent for me,” he said in a colorless and slightly drowsy voice.
“What has happened now?”
“Sit down,” the Speaker returned. “Henry Watkins and John
Hammond will be here in a moment.”
Without a word the Canadian sank into a chair and drew the fur of
his gown closely round his ears and mouth. Over the folds of it his
small, red eyes looked out with an unwavering and sinister
expression. His arrival brought an oppressive silence with it; and
Jeremy began suddenly to feel the uncanny effects of being thus
wakeful in a sleeping world. He looked furtively at the calm, stern
face of the Speaker, and saw how the thick lips were compressed in
a rigid line. Outside a faint and eery wind persistently moved the
leaves. Within, the great building was stonily silent all around them;
and the flames of the candles on the table danced at a movement of
the air or burnt up straight and still in the succeeding calm. The hush
lasted until a servant announced the attendance of Henry Watkins
and John Hammond, who had been fetched out of their beds and
had reached the Treasury together.
“I told you, sir, I told you how it would be,” said Henry Watkins at
once in a voice like the insistent notes of a tolling bell.
The Speaker made an abrupt gesture. “You have heard then?” he
asked sharply.
“We passed a man outside, sir, in the courtyard, lying on the ground
beside his tethered horse,” John Hammond interposed, “and we
made inquiries while we were waiting to be brought in to you.”
“I have made no secret of it,” the Speaker said simply. “Every waking
man in the Treasury may know all about it by now. Well, then....” And
in his deliberate and unconcerned manner he repeated to them the
same story that he had told to Jeremy. “Nor am I sorry for it,” he
concluded. “It is as well that we should be done with all this at once,
as I think we shall be.”
When he had finished the Canadian shifted slightly in his chair. “You
say they are at Oxford now?” he asked, his voice a little muffled by
the thick fur that brushed his lips. The Speaker assented. “And the
Gloucestershire men have joined them?” Again the Speaker
assented. “Ah!” murmured the Canadian enigmatically; and he
seemed to sink further into the folds of his gown, as though he were
preparing himself for sleep.
Henry Watkins and John Hammond made no answer, but looked at
one another lugubriously.
“Come, gentlemen,” the Speaker cried heartily. “We know now that
we have nothing to be afraid of. I have determined that Jeremy Tuft
shall take command of the whole army; and I am sure that the man
who saved us this morning can save us again.”
“Ah, that is a good plan,” observed John Hammond sagely. He was a
heavy man of slow speech, and he wagged his head solemnly while
he talked. “Jeremy Tuft will command the whole army. That is a very
good plan.”
“We could not do better,” said Henry Watkins with an approach to
cheerfulness.
Jeremy fancied that he heard Thomas Wells sniff under his
wrappings; and the justice of the implied criticism twitched horribly at
his nerves. He stared out of the window into the blackness, a resolve
taking shape in his mind. At last he stood up deliberately and spoke
with a roughness, almost arrogance, that he certainly did not feel.
“I will not take command of the army,” he said, letting the words fall
one by one. “I am not fit to do it. I should only bring disaster on all of
us. I have too much at stake to risk it. It would be better if Thomas
Wells were to take command.” He stopped and waited, defiant and
sullen. The Canadian made one sharp movement, then folded his
gown more closely around him, so as still further to hide his face,
and sat on impassively.
Henry Watkins was at him at once, eagerly arguing that there was
little hope, but that what there was lay in his hands. Jeremy looked
around as though he were seeking some way of escape. He felt very
weary and alone. He didn’t want to argue: it was a waste of time and
pains since his mind was made up, and neither the most urgent nor
the most persuasive reasoning could change it. But while Henry
Watkins talked and he countered in stubborn monosyllables, he was
watching sidelong, with an unnamed, unadmitted apprehension, the
Speaker’s resolved and quiet face. Suddenly Henry Watkins ceased
and threw up his hands in a gesture of despair. Then the Speaker
rose, walked away, and, without a word, tugged sharply at the bell-
pull. A servant immediately answered the summons, and in his ear
the old man delivered a long whispered order. The servant bowed
and went out, and the Speaker returned to his seat. All the others
looked at him curiously, but maintained the silence which had fallen
on them.
Then Jeremy involuntarily broke out, “What have you done? What
have you sent for?”
“I have sent for my daughter,” the Speaker answered steadily. “It is
time for her to be called into our counsels.”

3
Jeremy’s muscles jerked and quivered at the Speaker’s
announcement, but he said nothing. His mouth set more firmly, a
frown came on his forehead, and his hands, thrust under his folded
arms, were so tightly clenched that he had a sensation of pain in the
knuckles. Behind this appearance of resolution his thoughts were
plaintive and resentful. He repeated over and over again in his mind,
“I will not give way. I must not give way. Why will they be such fools?”
The more he considered it the more certain he became that he was
not competent to command an army. He could not do it, he told
himself, and at the same time look properly after his guns. Besides,
he was modest in a hard-headed way; and he refused to believe that
he had the qualities which are necessary in great military
commanders. The fact that he most passionately desired that they
should win the coming battle only made him more determined to
refuse this absurd proposal. As he sat silent in the ring of silent men
he felt injured and aggrieved, and his temper grew with every
moment more obstinate.
The conversation did not revive after the Speaker’s interruption, for a
sense of expectation filled the room and kept it in abeyance.
Presently the old man rose statelily from his chair and, moving to the
window, thrust out his head and leant his arms on the sill. By doing
so he broke the tension a little; and Jeremy got up and went to the
table to look for a cigar, walking self-consciously and feeling that all
these people regarded him with dislike. When he had found a cigar
and lit it, he shrank from going back to his seat and facing them
again. He lingered at the table, where he had discovered some
papers of his own relating to the guns; and these made an excuse
with which he could pretend to busy himself. He was vaguely
conscious somewhere just within the blurred edge of his vision that
John Hammond had gone over to Thomas Wells and was talking to
him in a subdued voice. The Canadian answered seldom and briefly,
and their words floated past his ears in a faint confusion of sound.
Then John Hammond grew louder and more urgent and the
Canadian exclaimed morosely:
“I have no patience....”
John Hammond insisted; and, in spite of himself, Jeremy turned his
head sideways to listen.
“It would be better to be beaten,” he heard Thomas Wells say, almost
under his breath but with a vicious intensity, “than be led by a
vampire risen God knows how from the grave!” A disagreeable thrill
passed through him; but before he could stir the door by his side
opened softly and the Lady Eva stood motionless on the threshold.
She was wearing a furred robe, like Thomas Wells’s; but it was less
ample and hung on her more gracefully. Her fair hair fell in two long
plaits, loose at the ends, down her back, and her eyes, though they
shone with excitement, yet showed that she had just risen from
sleep. As Jeremy silently regarded her, she glanced down and pulled
the hem of the robe across to hide her bare ankles.
When she looked beyond him and saw how many others there were
in the room, she seemed to recoil a little. “Father,” she said,
speaking quietly but steadily, “you sent for me!”
The Speaker slowly drew his great shoulders in through the window
and turned around. “Come in, Eva,” he ordered in an equable voice,
“come in and sit down. These are all friends here, and you need not
be ashamed before them.” She advanced with short steps, sat in
Jeremy’s chair, which stood empty, and arranged the hem of her
gown about her feet and the collar about her throat. Then, before
fixing her eyes on the old man, she cast a candid and ardent regard
of affection at Jeremy. He was discomposed by it, and only with an
effort could he compel his eyes to meet hers and answer them. She
seemed for a moment to be troubled; but her face cleared to an
expression of eager intentness as her father began to address her.
“This is the first time I have ever asked you to help me, Eva,” he said
with kindly and matter-of-fact briskness. “Perhaps I should have
done so before; but now at least I think you can do something for us
that no one else can do. There is another war in front of us: I need
not tell you now how or why it has arisen. It will be nothing at all if we
face it properly; and therefore I have designed that your promised
husband here shall command the army. He refuses; I do not know
why—perhaps modesty ... perhaps....” He shrugged his shoulders,
pursed his lips and spread out his hands, palms uppermost. “I sent
for you because I thought that to-night you might be able to sway
him, as I cannot.”
During this speech Jeremy’s anger had been rising fast, and now he
interrupted. “This is most unfair, sir,” he cried, coming forward from
the shadows in which he had been hiding.
“Be quiet, Jeremy,” said the Speaker, without raising his voice, but
with a note of sternness. Then he went on smoothly: “My girl, I ask
you to remember that the safety of all of us, of you and of your
mother and of myself, no less than of the country, depends on our
leaving nothing undone to protect ourselves. I am persuaded that
Jeremy Tuft should be our leader, but I cannot convince him. I put
our case in your hands.”
The girl leant forward a little towards him, breathing quickly, her eyes
wide open and her lips parted. A shade as of thought passed over
her face; but Jeremy broke in again, still looking at the old man.
“You won’t understand me, sir,” he protested anxiously. “God knows I
would do what you ask if I thought it for the best. But I know what I
can’t do and you don’t. You exaggerated what I did this morning. You
don’t know anything about it, sir, indeed you don’t. There’s only one